okay fine. Since Tom's not answering I'll shoot a quick overview. He can correct it if he sees it, since I'm going off of old memory here. And it's easier to pick and edit than to write from scratch.
It just takes a bit of work at first, and you need to know most of the players and how well they play. Once you get going, players (esp weaker players and 8ball players) come out of the woodwork for it because: you don't get knocked out early, and everyone has a chance at winning some money.
$5 entry. Race to One 8ball, guaranteed 2.5 hours of play. (Specify your times, like 7:30pm to 10pm.)
Say you have 16 players. You'll need 8 tables. Rank them from 1-16 based on how well you think they play. It helps to group them into A, B, C, etc, then fine tune your groups until the 16 are ranked. Assign the players their numbers and make them memorize them and report with their numbers for the night.
The very first match:
Table A: Player 1 will play Player 2.
Table B: Player 3 vs Player 4.
Table C: Player 5 vs Player 6.
...All the way down.
If a player wins their game, the next round they will move up to the lower lettered table while his losing opponent will move down to a higher lettered table for the next round.
So in the above example, Players 1, 3, 6, and 7 reported that they won their matches. When all games have been completed, everyone moves tables accordingly, by your announcement. So in the next round, the first three tables will be:
Table A: Player 1 stays on his prized table against Player 3
Table B: Player 2 plays Player 6
Table C: Player 4 plays Player 7
(Player 5 moved down to Table D)
Have one piece of paper to track the tables they are on and moving to- a list of names by rank number, and columns for each round into which you will list the table letters. As they report their wins, you can mark the next table they will be playing on in the next round's column. This will help as you announce the next round and read off player and table numbers.
Have another piece of paper to mark tallies of wins for each player: again list the players by rank number, and next to them have a column for each round. Make an X if they win that round. At the end of the night, count the number of wins each player has.
At HT they get about 6 or 7 games in 2.5 hours- due to both slow play and people being slow to report to their next match (bathroom, cigarette, drink order, random discussions of aiming systems in the other room).
So after 6 rounds, you might end up with 2 people who only lost one game each, and 3 people who only lost 2 games each. Everybody else lost half or more... I doubt the math worked out perfectly on that- I'm making this example up.
16 x $5 means you've got $80 to share between the five best finishers. Say the two first placers get $25 each, and the three 2nd placers get $10 each.
Thing is, everybody got 2.5 hours of pool AND got to play with a variety of people. It's very social, and helps new- to- tournament players feel more confident and secure.
(final note- if you have an odd number of players, the weakest player with the lowest rank will get a bye in the first round. You will always have a player in each round getting a bye with an automatic win on their chart.)
